Disclaimer: I own nothing but the story itself.
Warning: This story takes place in the future of the Naruto timeline. That means some characters are dead and some are very different from how they currently are in the story. I hate character bashing, so no character is dead or changed because I'm trying to bash them.
Moving On
Chapter One
By Michiru's Mirror
"So we might as well get married."
Sakura choked on her wine. That wasn't even close to what she'd thought Naruto was going to say.
Sakura put her glass down on the table and examined her long-time lover's face. Naruto looked tense and tired just as he had for the past six months. Sakura had been able to tell that something had been wrong with him because of that uncharacteristic tension, but she knew him well enough to know that if he didn't want to talk about his problems he simply wouldn't, not even with her.
So she had told him that she was there to listen if he needed to talk, then waited while he had mulled over whatever was on his mind. When he had suddenly appeared in her office at the Konoha hospital that afternoon, asking if she wouldn't mind leaving work early so they could have a night out, Sakura knew he was ready. She'd cleared the time off with Tsunade—the hospital was, luckily, having a slow night—and followed Naruto to one of the swankiest restaurants in Konoha.
Sakura had been awed as she walked through the door. Marble posts stood proudly outside the carved wooden doors; inside lanterns hung along the walls setting a soft, romantic atmosphere. Naruto had never had a romantic bone in his body, and so Sakura had felt more than a little apprehensive as he'd ordered expensive wine. What horrible thing was Naruto going to say that made him think that he had to butter her up this much? The ambiance of this place was so spectacular, it was a shame it was ruined by the mood.
Sakura sighed. If Naruto looked this tired, and had had this much trouble articulating his marriage proposal, it couldn't be what he really wanted. The question was, then, why was he asking her?
"Well, is that what you want?" Sakura asked him.
"It just seems like it's time—"
"I'm not asking you if it seems like it's time," Sakura gently interrupted, "I'm asking you if it's what you want."
Naruto paused, the frown lines marring his forehead growing deeper as he chewed that question over. "Well…I love you."
Sakura smiled, honestly touched. "I love you too. But is marriage what you want?"
Naruto sighed and looked so sad that Sakura had to restrain herself from running around the white-clothed table and hugging him. "You're not just going to let me get away with this, are you?"
Sakura grinned, mischievously this time. "Nope. Since when have I ever let you get away with bullshit?"
"Point." Naruto smiled affectionately. "But…well…do you want to get married?"
"Not even a little," said Sakura.
She wound up backtracking quickly at the look of hurt on Naruto's face. "I don't mean it like that! I love you, and I love our life together—it's just, why try to mess with what we have? I'm running Konoha Hospital pretty much on my own, and I have so many good friends, and I have you and I'm so happy with you now. Why would I want to improve on perfection?"
Naruto was nodding and Sakura was pleased to see some of the tension ease out of his face. "Yeah, that's kinda what I've been thinking too. It's just…don't you think it's time? We're thirty-five and we've been together for…uh…"
"Eighteen years," said Sakura with narrowed eyes. If he forgot their anniversary again, she would not be held responsible for her actions.
"Right. And pretty much everyone else in our class who isn't dead is married now—or, well, divorced, but they've been married. I just wonder if we're stuck in a rut," said Naruto.
"I understand," said Sakura, and she did. "I remember when I was twelve, I was sure I'd be married with at least five kids by now."
Naruto grinned. "You were sure you'd be married to Sasuke with at least five kids by now."
"Well yeah," said Sakura, blushing. "But now that I'm here, I'm just really, really content with what I have. We're already living together so it doesn't seem like things would change too much. But marriage brings on…obligations…"
"Like kids?" asked Naruto.
"Right," said Sakura. She paused, and then: "Do…do you want kids?"
"In theory? Yes," said Naruto. "But in reality…when would we have time? We barely get a night to ourselves once every month or two as it is now. ANBU captain and Head Medic of Konoha are not positions that give free time. I'm sure we could afford a nanny, but what's the point of having a kid if you don't raise it?"
"True enough," said Sakura. "If there were one thing I would change about my life now, it would be seeing more of you. But you work so hard to make time for me in between your missions as it is…it makes me happy that you want to see me that much." Sakura reached across the table and took Naruto's hand in her own. The couple took a moment to just grin at each other across the candle on their table and be happy. There had been far too few moments like this over the last few years.
They were interrupted by the arrival of the food; vegetarian lasagna for Sakura and fettuccini for Naruto. Sakura giggled under her breath. Noodles. Even here, he just had to have noodles. They dug in, and spent the next fifteen minutes just enjoying their food.
"Listen," said Sakura once she'd finished. "I know this sounds corny but why don't we take this one day at a time? You're the Hokage's official apprentice so you're going through training hell right now, and as the new Head Medic I'm still organizing things at the Hospital so the next year is going to be crazy for me. Maybe now's just not a good time. I have a few good childbearing years left to me, especially with all the medical and fertility jutsu Tsunade-shishou has stuck into my head over the past five years."
Naruto wondered if Tsunade wasn't trying to tell them something.
"Let's let things settle down, and then we'll see what we feel like when life isn't so hectic, okay?" said Sakura.
Naruto nodded eagerly. He didn't know what he'd done to deserve the woman sitting across from him (and looking adorable with a dot of tomato sauce stuck to the side of her lips), but he was grateful, whatever it was. They had their whole lives ahead of them—if it got too late to have their own biological children, there were always dozens of orphans who needed good homes.
Getting up and sliding around the table, Naruto cupped a surprised Sakura's chin in his hand and tilted her head upwards. He leaned down and licked the stray tomato sauce from the side of her mouth, enjoying the way Sakura sucked in her breath at the stimulation.
"Well, that's one problem solved," said Naruto, letting his voice lower into the growl he knew Sakura loved. "Now there's the problem of just how you're going to move tomorrow given how many times I'm going to make love to you tonight."
"Naruto!" Sakura whispered, astonished but obviously pleased. "We're in public!"
Yes indeed, thought Naruto as he paid the bill and rushed Sakura home, that was one problem solved…but not the only problem. He had lost his nerve after all.
When Sakura had mentioned that Naruto was the Hokage's apprentice, she had missed the scowl that had flashed across Naruto's face. He was glad, and had in fact made an effort to get the look off his face before his perceptive lover could pick up on it.
Life was confusing, more confusing then he'd ever thought it would be as a child. By this age, he was going to be married to Sakura and be the Hokage, he'd known it at the age of twelve as certainly as he'd known his name was Uzumaki Naruto. But now that he was an adult and had both those things in his grasp, he wasn't sure if he wanted them…either of them.
Sakura had been all right about not wanting to marry yet, thank God. But who could Naruto possibly talk to about whether or not he wanted to be the Hokage?
Whenever Naruto wanted to keep from thinking about anything serious, he went to visit the Akimichi household. This surprised him, because he never thought of Chouji's house as the funnest place in Konoha to be, but the truth was that Chouji and Ino were the only people Naruto knew who were actually living the dream of Happily Ever After.
When the two had married in their mid twenties, Konoha as a whole had been shocked. Chouji's friends wondered what the hell he'd been thinking marrying such a loud-mouthed high-maintenance bimbo. Ino's friends wondered what the he'll she'd been thinking marrying such a fatass wimpy guy.
But ten years and three children down the line the two were the most stable couple Konoha had seen since Asuma and Kurenai. Chouji's patience let him put up with Ino's nagging in a way most men couldn't, and his kindness made Ino feel loved in a way she'd never felt before in her life. Now, after three children and the passing of time Ino had grown several sizes out from what she used to be, and gleefully told every other woman who had been dumped for gaining a few pounds that her Chouji couldn't have cared less. He adored his wife fat as much as he had adored her thin, and the two seemed to be happy on a daily basis in a way that Naruto had never seen another family manage.
Naruto enjoyed going over there because it gave him hope for himself and Sakura, and for the fulfillment of his dreams. True, Chouji and Ino's dream of playing house was a lot simpler than his of being acknowledged as Hokage, but they had achieved it nonetheless. He found it inspiring.
Besides, Chouji was just a great guy to hang out with and Ino turned out to be a surprisingly good cook.
Before taking Sakura out to dinner Naruto had gone to see them, but the visit wasn't meant to be. Naruto walked up to the sprawling (and rusting) black gates that closed the home of the Akimichi clan off from the rest of Konoha and found them locked tight against him.
This was so fucking unfair! He was in pain, damnit! He was confused and his brain hurt from all the thinking he was being forced to do, and his friends had locked their doors against him! Fifty lashes for both Chouji and Ino!
Oh, he shouldn't have thought that. That thought lead to thoughts of Chouji trussed up like a hyperactive horse in a stable with Ino standing behind him holding a whip and wearing some truly interesting underwear. She might have gained a few pounds, but the woman still had the best breasts next to Tsunade herself…
But even thoughts of Ino's breasts couldn't make the melancholy go away, for it had sat heavy on Naruto's shoulders for months and only grew worse with time. How could he say what he was thinking? Even with Sakura Naruto's throat would close up and shame would swell in his chest until he almost passed out every time he tried to tell her what was wrong. Maybe it was worse with her because she had such faith in him—there was no doubt in her mind that he would become Hokage. How could he doubt himself when she believed in him so strongly?
No training, no meditation and no amount of beating himself up over his insecurity was making the feeling anything but stronger. Naruto felt that he was going mad, and he didn't have a clue of how to stop it.
He walked to Konoha Hospital to ask Sakura on a date.
Part of being the Hokage's official apprentice was spending hours every day at the Hokage's office studying. Naruto had never liked studying, and hated it as much in his thirties as he had in his teens. Still, when Tsunade had told him two years ago that she planned to step down soon and name him her apprentice, Naruto had eagerly agreed to clear his schedule for training.
His thoughts on what that training would be were romantic and exciting. He would learn powerful techniques to blow away the strongest of opponents, study the dark secrets of rival hidden villages and learn whole new o-iroke no jutsu to kick Konohamaru's ass with.
The reality had been such a let down that Naruto had yet to recover from it. On the first day of training he had bounced up the stairs into the Hokage's office in a manner that was entirely unbecoming of an adult only to have a mountain of paperwork dropped into his arms.
"Baa-chan, what's this?"
"What does it look like?" Tsunade said, clearly amused at the look on his face. "It's paperwork. Come on, my staff have sorted those missions by rank and now we have to decide what teams get to take them."
And so that was what they did. Naruto sat on a wobbly wooden stool in a dusty corner of the Hokage's office for so long that his back began to ache and made checkmarks until his fingers went numb. He showed Tsunade his choices only to have her shake her head, tell him why none of his ideas could work, and sent him back to the corner to do it again.
Even worse, the project was never anywhere near to being complete. He would finish one stack only to find that two more piles of new missions had taken its place.
Naruto was amazed that Tsunade could handle all of this—he'd never had work that exhausted him so completely in his life. The Godaime Hokage'sjutsu kept her looking as young as ever, but at seventy-one years of age she was clearly not moving as well as she had in the past. Too proud to use a cane, she had her chair subtly remodeled to ease her body's aches and yelled for her staff to get things for her a lot more. But she was still the healthiest old lady ever put on earth, and her brain was as sharp as it ever was. Very few people who had met Tsunade felt it was time for her to retire.
Well, if she could handle it, so could he. Naruto was more patient than he had been at twelve, and at first assumed this was Tsunade making sure he could do the worst and most boring part of the Hokage job before giving him some real work. When a council of Fire Country elders was called together, Naruto felt really excited—here, finally he would see the Hokage in action! She would talk about real missions with the elders and Naruto would get to go and help her take care of Important Country Business!
To his disappointment and disbelief, the mission topic turned out to be the problem Fire Country was having with wild pigs.
"Baa-chan," a very fed up Naruto said to Tsunade as they walked from the meeting to her office. "Look I know pigs are important and everything, but when are we going to get to the real work?"
Tsunade had looked very surprised. "Real work?" she asked him. "What exactly do you think the Hokage does?"
And that was when Naruto realized he didn't know. He knew that he'd loved the Sandaime as a grandfather, and knew that becoming the Hokage would mean that no one could ever doubt him again.
But what exactly did the Hokage do? He'd never asked.
"But Baa-chan," Naruto said almost desperately. "It can't be just paperwork and meetings, can it? Sandaime fought Orochimaru and Yondaime fought the kyuubi…"
"Sure, and if a great battle that involves all of Konoha happens, you will be expected to lead the village. But Naruto, how often do you think a battle like that happens?"
She had a point. "And if it's not a big fight like that, the Hokage isn't involved?"
"The Hokage must go out of their way to avoid being involved," said Tsunade. "The village looks to you for leadership and guidance and if you die they're left like a body without a head."
"So…so if Sakura-chan or somebody got into real trouble I couldn't go out and help them? I'd have to just sit behind my desk and let them die?"
Tsunade looked him squarely in the eye and said, "That's right. To protect the many, you're often expected to sacrifice one or two."
Oh the nightmares that day had given him! There was one where he stood in his office and looked down from his window to see Sakura being disemboweled and mutilated by Iwagakure ninja. She was reduced to a bloody mass of screaming tissue and flesh while he stood and stared and did nothing. In another dream Sasuke was being beaten by Itachi. He had curled his body into a ball while Itachi kicked at him and broke his bones, and Naruto watched and made checkmarks on endless pieces of paper…and then he looked at the papers and realized he was writing with blood, blood that he knew somehow was Sasuke's…
The very idea of sacrificing someone he loved was such an anathema to Naruto that he had trouble functioning for days. Why? He would ask himself. What was the point of protecting a village where everyone you cared about was dead?
It was only days later that Tsunade had answered that question.
Sunagakure was an ally to Konoha. Everyone knew that, and as a friend of Gaara Naruto was thrilled about it. But still, the attack that Suna was planning on Kirigakure was cruel and unnecessary, and Naruto couldn't understand why Tsunade wasn't at least sending a diplomat out to try and talk Gaara out of the bloody, pointless massacre.
"Suna is our ally and Kiri is not," Tsunade told him.
"But those are innocent people! Gaara says he's doing it in retaliation for a murder but he doesn't even know if Kiri's government ordered the attack, does he? It could have been missing-nin or terrorists or people trying to set Kiri up! He could at least go and talk to their Kage!"
"Yes, and that's what I'd do, but Gaara isn't a patient or forgiving man." Tsunade shrugged. "But he's our ally and so that's that."
"Just because he's our ally doesn't mean we have to let him do what he wants!" Naruto could feel himself turning red and couldn't stop himself. He could already see the mutilated bodies of women and children that would result from a full-scale slaughter.
"As long as he's not attacking us, that's exactly what it means," said Tsunade. She was leaning back behind her desk, her eyes narrowing as Naruto continued to be dense. "If we come under attack we'll need his help, Naruto. We can't ostracize him just because he's being unreasonable about something that means nothing to Konoha."
"Means nothing?" Never in his life could Naruto recall feeling so outraged. The idea that a woman he so looked up to was being this cold was just…unnatural! "Mothers getting raped in the streets and babies being used as target practice means nothing?"
Tsunade was looking at him as though she had never seen him before. "Oh Naruto," she said, and the disappointment in her voice surprised him into silence. What right did she have to be disappointed with him? "I never realized how little you understood."
She leaned forward before he could say a word, and reached into her desk to pull out several kunai. "Here, I'll show you."
In a typical display of decisiveness Tsunade brushed the paperwork off her desk with a single sweep of her arm. Shizune could clean it up later. Taking one shining kunai out of its holder, she stabbed it upright in the middle of her wooden desk. "This is Konoha."
She pulled out another kunai and stabbed it down next to the Konoha kunai. "This is Suna."
Another. "This is Kiri."
And another. "This is Iwa."
In the end Tsunade went through every village, friend and foe, that Konoha had and Naruto saw that she had made those villages into a circle of kunai around the Konoha kunai. Naruto had to admit that Konoha looked terribly lonely, surrounded by over a dozen other kunai as it was.
"Now," said Tsunade. "You agree that for the most part, one village against one village would make a fair fight, right? Like when Otogakure attacked. Each village has its share of chuunin, jounin, and many of them have one super-powerful hidden weapon like you or Gaara or Kisame or Itachi. With me so far?"
Naruto nodded, wary about where this might be going.
"Right. So. With allies, if, say Oto and Iwa and Kiri were to team up and attack us, we would call our friends in Suna and Yuki to come help." As she spoke, Tsunade rearranged the kunai to illustrate her point. Touching three of the kunai and labeling them "Oto" "Iwa" and "Kiri," she moved them forward on her desk towards the Konoha kunai standing proudly upright in the middle. Then she took the two kunai dubbed "Suna" and "Yuki" and moved them to stand beside the Konoha kunai so that there were two rows of three kunai facing each other. "Basically, this would make a fair fight. Got it?"
Naruto nodded.
"But if Konoha were to lose its allies—" Tsunade plucked the Suna and Yuki kunai from the table, and Konoha was again facing down three villages by itself.
"I know, Baa-chan, but—"
"I'm not finished," said Tsunade sharply. Naruto fell silent, looking at Tsunade from across her desk and waiting. "Now, do you remember what happened after Oto attacked us? How, even during reconstruction, Konoha continued to accept missions?"
"Yeah…"
"Do you remember why?"
"Sure," said Naruto. "To keep ourselves from looking weak."
"Which keeps us from being a target to villages which are currently neutral, but would jump at the chance to take us down and learn our secrets," said Tsunade. She grabbed a handful of the other kunai from the table and began to arrange them behind Oto, Iwa and Kiri. "If we lost our allies we'd be alone, and that would be a great weakness. We'd suddenly be facing not only our enemies, but power-hungry and ambitious villages that would see a chance to boost their power." The Konoha kunai was suddenly looking noticeably outnumbered.
"And on top of that," said Tsunade before Naruto could get his thoughts together, "The allies who we snubbed would be angry that we'd been bad allies to them. It's entirely possible that they'd join the hostile forces against us for revenge, just like Gaara is doing now to Kirigakure."
"Gaara wouldn't do that—"
"Even saying he wouldn't, how about the high-ranking ninja in his council? Gaara won't be Kazekage forever," Tsunade said.
Now the Konoha kunai was facing off against over a dozen other kunai on Tsunade's desk, and even Naruto had to admit that he couldn't see any way for his beloved village to overcome quite such overwhelming odds.
"But…" he said finally. "But it's not right…" All the logic that Tsunade had given him somehow just wasn't enough. He saw those women and children again, and he felt his heart clench painfully. "All those children…"
Looking at him sadly, Tsunade pulled all of the kunai from her desk, save the Konoha one. Never letting her gaze leave his face, Tsunade raised those kunai…and dropped them on the Konoha kunai, knocking it over and burying it.
"If you save their children," she said, "you will kill ours."
Naruto had never forgotten what he had seen that day, that one kunai buried beneath the weight of over twelve others.
Could he do that? Could he ever do what Tsuande was doing and just sit by and watch people be tortured and killed when he had the power to stop it?
He didn't know. But it was becoming very clear to him that if he couldn't, he could never be Hokage.
A/N
Next chapter we see how Sasuke is doing!
What do you guys think? Comment please, and feel free to let me know what you liked and didn't.
